Jonathon Gruenke | Kalamazoo GazetteThe owners of the Wayside West nightclub on Stadium Drive are considering a plan to redevelop the Franklin Valley Estates mobile home park into an apartment complex.

KALAMAZOO -- Two developers may be poised to capitalize on renewed retail interest along Stadium Drive on the city's west side.

Cole Automotive Group, which moved its Buick and GMC dealerships in August to South Westnedge Avenue in Portage, is working with AVB Construction on a redevelopment plan for its idled property at 3003 Stadium, said Greg Dobson, vice president of the commercial-construction arm of American Village Builders Inc., of Portage.

"We are in the very beginning stages of redevelopment of that parcel," Dobson said. "All options are on the table."

Dobson said he couldn't discuss details. Attempts to contact Tom Cole, president of Cole Automotive, were not successful.

And across the busy four-lane artery from the shuttered dealership, a mobile-home park may see a new use.

The owners of the Wayside West nightclub are eyeing a four-building apartment complex on Franklin Valley Estates, behind the nightclub, and a new retail center that would replace the Wayside, according to city officials.

The proposal is in its early stages, and Wayside officials have declined to comment.

Stadium offers alternative
Both potential projects come on the heels of the opening last spring of The Shoppes on Stadium by The Hinman Co. at 3330 Stadium.

Jonathon Gruenke | Kalamazoo GazetteThe Franklin Valley Estates mobile home park, as seen from the north end of the parking lot at Wayside.

Real-estate developers are increasingly looking at Stadium as an alternative to the area's traditional shopping corridors of South Westnedge Avenue and West Main Street.

"Stadium Drive is becoming a more popular destination because it remains affordable and has good traffic volume and good demographics," said Jodi Milks, managing director of the Kalamazoo office of Grubb & Ellis/Paramount Commerce.

Milks helped Hinman land tenants for its 23,000-square-foot strip.

Retailers may be interested in Stadium, Milks said, for these reasons:
• High traffic volume -- more than 25,000 vehicles per day.
• Better value for shop owners -- Leasing rates are lower than the more heavily trafficked South Westnedge Avenue and West Main Street retail corridors.
• Proximity to Western Michigan University students.
• Proximity to the Winchell and West Main neighborhoods.

The Shoppes on Stadium -- which include about 28,000 square feet of space in two buildings -- are filling up, and Hinman has plans for more development there, said Rich MacDonald, the firm's chief operating officer.

"We have some additional land to continue with (retail) strips or some other configuration of buildings," MacDonald said.

And at the western city limit, developer Treystar Inc. is investing in the University Commons Shopping Center, which it acquired last year. That center, at the corner of Stadium and Drake Road, is anchored by a K-Mart store, but Treystar has added smaller buildings along Stadium and has attracted a Starbucks Coffee franchise and a Centennial Wireless store.

Wayside may be razed
Changes at the Wayside property have been hinted at by a zoning variance KWN Properties LLC received from Kalamazoo to build apartment buildings behind the Wayside West site.

KWN Properties is owned by Kenneth W. Newby, who also owns Wayside West and two adjacent mobile-home parks, Franklin Valley Estates and Meadowview Village.

According to city records, KWN in December requested two zoning variances for the 11-acre Franklin Valley Estates property -- a retail variance and a second variance to allow 61 percent of the land there to be covered with buildings and parking lots.

KWN dropped the land-coverage variance request earlier this month and added the Wayside West property to the proposed redevelopment, said Pete Eldridge, project coordinator for the city's Planning and Community Development Department.

The addition of a commercial building to the proposed residential complex changes the classification of the whole property to mixed-use, Eldridge said.

Mixed-use properties are allowed under city zoning rules to have up to 80 percent of their land covered by parking lots and buildings.

Under the new proposal, which would still require approval from the city's site-plan-review process and a permit from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, KWN would build a new commercial strip behind Wayside and then demolish the nightclub, Eldridge said.

"The Wayside would be the largest tenant" of the new strip, he said. "They would demolish that entire structure, and it would become parking lot."

But Eldridge cautioned that it's not the first time KWN Properties has proposed an apartment complex that didn't materialize.

"It was August of 2006 when another proposal came through, and at that time it was two nine-story apartment towers that were proposed," he said.